


all covered in exclamation marks

by ascience



Category: Sports RPF, Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Olympique Lyonnais, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-27 07:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/pseuds/ascience
Summary: Ada, undeniably, is a force of nature.





	all covered in exclamation marks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doubtthestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/gifts).



> Dear recip, thank you for your wonderful prompts and for giving me a reason to put this story into words.  
> Some details in this fic are based on [what actually happened in the last seasons](https://66.media.tumblr.com/36ef84467abacdad0bb2d22ac1e4f06c/tumblr_onb3cc8OPd1vgdi8ho2_r1_540.gif), some things are lies I made up because I can.
> 
> This fic involves a lot of gushing about OL which is kind of weird for me, but they are record CL champions so my hand was forced. (Allez, PSG.)

At first, it’s just an itch. Something restless crawling under Maro’s skin, hard to pin down.

She figures it’s the tension ahead of the Champions League, where they’re heading towards the close end of the competition. But she doesn’t usually get nervous like that before matches, and even describing the feeling as nervousness doesn’t quite seem right.

It’s more like a pressure in her head that’s constantly trying to pull at her focus and that makes all the French in training even harder to follow. There’s no pain, but it still annoys Maro.

It must have shown a little bit, because when Maro sits down for lunch with her teammates, Ada gives her a smile and a thoughtful look.

The itching lightens momentarily, but it’s definitely still there.

“How are you doing?” Ada asks as she mixes up the pasta and sauce on her plate.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Maro replies automatically, but Ada raises her eyebrows.

“Just asking because you’ve been a little fidgety. We’ve beaten City before, we’ll be great. No need to worry.”

From the side, Lucy _tsk_ s before returning to her food and her phone.

“I’m not worried. I’ve just been feeling weird for some days.” Maro rubs two fingers against her left temple.

“A headache?” Ada asks.

“I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like, uh,” Maro says and closes her hand around air in front of her face.

“It’s like,” Ada imitates Maro, repeats her gesture and laughs. “Whatever that means, you should probably get it checked out by the physios.”

Maro nods noncommittally. She watches Ada push a strand of her hair behind her ear, a casual action but somehow still fascinating.

Ada, undeniably, is a force of nature.

Perhaps one wouldn’t necessarily expect it from just looking at her and her perky smile for a second, but Maro has watched Ada play and found that it’s hard not to get caught up in her.

Maro tries to contribute her own magic to Lyon’s type of play and so far it’s worked out pretty well. Maro and Ada click, so to speak.

Maro didn’t decide to transfer to Lyon to find this, to find her, but she’s pretty glad she did.

She eats the rest of her lunch more or less in silence, listening to Wendie talk about her plans to go to Russia for the men’s World Cup.

Maro feels better afterwards, so she doesn’t ask for an additional appointment with the physios in the belief that the itching passed completely.

It lasts about a day before it starts again on the team’s free day, away from training and the other players.

In addition, there’s a short, weak stab of pain in Maro’s temple, like the precursor of a headache come and gone again, and then there are words in her head that she doesn’t recall thinking about.

It’s foreign phrases that sound Scandinavian so she must have picked them up from Ada, but she can only guess the meaning of them. It might as well be Swedish she got from Anja.

The words are pesky and stick in Maro’s head, like somebody else is thinking them for her. She can only watch them pass by or push them to the back of her head. The only consolation is that they sound familiar and friendly, no matter the content.

The word _fotball_ comes up a lot, which Maro obviously knows. And then the word Manchester, but maybe those are Maro’s own thoughts getting muddled in as the team takes a flight and then a bus to head towards the Champions League semifinal.

Ada sits across from Maro at the four-person table in the bus, headphones on like most of their teammates. Maro looks out of the window and watches the passing scenery, but for some reason she feels drawn to glance at Ada again and again like when you feel somebody is watching you.

Maro really has the weird, baseless sense that Ada is focusing on her somehow, magnified by the tension under her skin - but she never catches Ada looking.

Only when the bus stops at the hotel and they all get up, Ada pulls the headphones from her ears, smiles at Maro and then looks away.

It’s already late in the evening and Pedros sends everybody to pick up their luggage and to head into their rooms pretty quickly, so Maro is surprised to hear a knock at her door when she’s brushing her teeth the hotel bathroom.

The visitor enters without waiting as Maro washes out her mouth and puts her toothbrush away.

“Hey, it’s me,” Ada calls through the half-open bathroom door. When Maro joins her, Ada has already comfortably dropped into one of the chairs.

Maro sits down opposite of her. “Hey. To what do I owe the honour?”

“I just wanted to see how you are. You know.” Ada closes her hand to a fist in front of her face, repeating how Maro first described the pressure around her head. “Wouldn’t want to miss you tomorrow.”

Maro laughs. “I can play. It had nothing to do with the match.”

Ada’s eyes sweep over Maro’s face and then land on her own folded hands in her lap.

“I know,” she says in a voice that Maro can’t quite read, but when Ada looks up her dimples are showing.

There’s a silence between them for a moment, then Maro speaks up.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a Norwegian word, I think. I want to know what it means,” Maro says and repeats one of the more frequent words that kept circling in her thoughts. She probably mispronounces it, but Ada nods anyway.

“ _Seier_? It means, like, victory. Why?”

Victory. Maro turns the word over in her head, to no avail. “I, uh, must have heard it somewhere, I guess.”

“It’s a good word. You should remember it tomorrow,” Ada says and winks.

Maro rolls her eyes, but she’s glad that they can joke about it, that they don’t need to fear anyone. Lyon is the one being feared, after all.

“Do you still have that weird feeling at all?” Ada asks.

Maro listens to the inside of herself and finds no itch, nothing like that. She doesn’t know when it stopped but now, with Ada sitting in front her, there’s just her own calm pulse and breathing that seems to mirror Ada’s.

“It’s gone,” Maro replies. “See? I wouldn’t miss playing tomorrow for the world.”

“Never thought anything different.”

They both look at their phones in the same moment and upon seeing the time, Ada sighs, slowly gets up and fixes her rumpled clothes. She’s staying in a room somewhere on the second floor. Maro doesn’t know where she overheard that, but somehow it’s a fact she knows.

Maro follows Ada and opens the door to the dimly lit hotel hallway for her.

“Goodnight,” Maro says and opens her arms. Ada leans in for the hug and as she replies, “ _Schlaf gut,_ ” in her out of practice German, Maro can feel the movement of her lips against her cheek.

The door closing behind Ada sounds abrupt.

* * *

 

Maro keeps her eyes fixed on the white 14 on the back of Ada’s black jersey in front of her as they walk onto the pitch.

They line up for the anthem, and everything else outside of this stadium is forgotten. What counts is now and here. What counts is getting to the final.

Wendie yells at them in the circle before the match starts and then the ref blows the whistle. It’s just like in so many other matches that Maro has played with Lyon, but this time she feels as if something has fallen into place that was set askew before.

She doesn’t have time to think it over in the hurry of the game, but it’s as if she’s gained another perspective on the pitch, and honestly, that level of weirdness fits well into her recent state of mind.

Maro usually has a feeling for where Ada is going to stand in the penalty box, they train too much for that not to happen. But this time it’s like she knows exactly where Ada is, where she’s going to turn and what she’s going to do with the ball and the defender marking her when Maro passes to her.

And Maro knows the ball is going in in exact same second that Ada does. Two seconds before the goalkeeper knows.

Ada spreads her arms and turns around herself, as smoothly as if she was dancing, then she is engulfed by Maro and their other teammates crowding around her.

Amid all the arms and bodies in black jerseys, Ada pulls Maro in until she is the only thing Maro can see, all focus on her. Ada’s hand curls around Maro’s neck, drawing Maro even closer until their foreheads touch.

Maro can see Ada’s mouth move, but she can’t hear anything. She still knows what Ada is saying, not in clear words, but in emotion.

It reminds Maro of the look in Ada’s eyes when they walked the streets of Lyon and passed a group of men that whistled at them from a small concrete pitch encaged by bars.

Ada squared her shoulders, Maro showed her teeth, and they took the football off of the guys and tore them apart on the pitch.

It shows one thing about women’s football: They never see you coming.

Ada’s eyes are closed now, as she still holds onto Maro on the sidelines, but the calm, yet defiant expression on her face is the same. To Maro it feels like she could step into Ada’s mind and probably the other way around. Like she can finally scratch the itch that’s been bothering her.

As their teammates disperse around them and Sarah yells across the whole pitch to stay concentrated, Maro also lets go of Ada.

They don’t let this lead slip from their hands.

It’s the fucking Champions League, and this team is made of champions.

* * *

 

To be entirely honest, it’s obvious that if anyone was going to help Maro unravel this knot, it was going to be Shanice.

She listens intently to Maro describing the pressure and the foreign words in her head and the connection to Ada in the match against Manchester, only wrinkling her nose sometimes.

“It feels like she’s two nuances more vibrant that about everything else,” Maro finishes helplessly.

“That sounds like you’re in love.”

Maro laughs dryly. “I _know_ I’m in love. It doesn’t explain the rest.”

“No, you’re right.” Shanice slowly nods. “That’s a bond. That’s what you’re describing.”

“What?”

“I mean. You know it fits.”

Maro stares at Shanice. It takes her some moments to process what she just heard.

“A bond. With Ada.”

“It’s exactly how they describe it,” Shanice says. “Sharing feelings and thoughts and getting strength from each other. And to be honest, if it was going to be anyone… it was going to be you two.”

Maro absentmindedly hums in response.

Bonds might be more common in football than in everyday life, because it’s where people meet who already willingly bind themselves to so many things like contracts and clubs and brands. But, just like love, they’re usually still unexpected.

If Shanice is right, Ada must feel the same, and must have felt it during the last match.

Maro’s heart starts beating fast and she realises that Ada could notice that, too, if it carries over their link. It’s scary and a little bit wonderful.

“So go and get her,” Shanice says and Maro doesn’t need to be told twice.

She doesn’t have a hard time finding Ada, because she’s where she usually is around this time of the day: in the locker room of the team’s gym, changing into her work-out clothes.

Ada looks up when Maro opens the door, and she smiles as Maro uselessly stands in the door frame.

Ada doesn’t appear to be irritated when Maro needs ages to gather the courage to speak up. Instead she calmly ties her shoes before she gets up and says, “I know you hear me, too.”

A wave of relief washes over Maro and she doesn’t know whether it’s coming from herself or Ada and what she was even afraid of to warrant that relief.

“I do, I mean,” Maro stutters, “I’m sorry, I don’t know, I don’t know what that means. I only just realised that it’s a bond.”

Ada mindlessly fumbles open the braid in her hair and the open strands fall along the side of her face. She smiles and there’s a hint of nervousness in it.

“I didn’t want to spring it on you.”

“So you’ve known… since when?”

Ada thinks for a moment before she answers. “A couple of weeks ago maybe. I sort of knew what it’s like from Andrine, so it was easier to spot, I guess. I wasn’t sure until the other day.”

“That was amazing,” Maro agrees, grinning.

Ada bites her lip and puts her hand on Maro’s arm where her tattoos disappear under the sleeve of her shirt. “About the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

When Maro leans in to kiss Ada, it’s probably half Ada’s thoughts pulling her in as well. As their mouths meet, Ada’s grip tightens around Maro’s biceps and Maro wraps her other arm around Ada’s waist.

Ada hums into the kiss and Maro catches sentence fragments in Norwegian in her head again. Neither of them says anything as they break apart, not in spoken words anyway. Ada’s hand comes up to Maro’s face and brushes across her cheek.

Ada laughs to herself then and Maro tilts her head as she can’t quite read the reason why in Ada yet.

“What?” Maro asks.

“Nothing,” Ada replies. “I just thought about how-- Aulas is going to want to know that he has bonded players now.”

Maro snorts, but Ada is right. She can already see him rubbing his hands over it.

“God, I know. Jesus,” Maro says. “But it’ll be fine. We do the football, they do the rest.”

The announcement of their bond won’t exactly change things, but management has this way of making easy things complicated with new contract clauses and updated training plans, it’s incredible.

Pedros does give them a speech about how they should be careful with their bond and implies stories of foolish men before them that managed to screw it up. But it’s all pretty irrelevant in the moments when Ada runs across the pitch and Maro can see the plan all laid out in her head, the passes, the turns and the goal.

Ada slides across the grass in celebration and Maro pulls her up by her jersey collar and kisses her.

They’re Lyon. Nobody can take them down.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this fic! Apologies that it's a little short but I will definitely return to the WoSo playground.
> 
> Huge thanks to the mods of LMS, as always.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kissthecrest) or [tumblr](http://lahmly.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat.


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